More legal action has been taken in the fight against the controversial Qalipu Mi’kmaq First Nation Band enrolment process, despite the new founding members’ list being due to come into effect today.
There are several different parties trying to challenge the legalities of the supplemental agreement that forced the reassessment of around 100,000 applications for band membership.
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Some of the actions involve groups of people with arguments against the criteria used to limit the new founding membership to less than 19,000. The original list issued in 2011 had more than 23,000, but around 10,000 of them will be erased from the newest list
This week, Eric Tucker filed his own application with the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador in Corner Brook. Tucker, who was an unsuccessful candidate for the chief position in the inaugural Qalipu election in 2012, is asking the court to instruct the federal Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to not revoke the status cards of the roughly 10,000 people whose names will be removed from the founding members list.
Tucker, who grew up in Meadows in the Bay of Islands but listed his address in court documents as North York, Ont., said there are too many outstanding court cases for the new list to be made official at this point in time.
He wants the court to order that all of those who have been told they will lose their status to be permitted to continue using their status cards until the outstanding court cases have been dealt with.
Tucker said revoking cards is a violation of these people’s right to their heritage and is creating a great deal of suffering
A court date of Sept. 26 has been set for Tucker’s application to be called.
